Published: Thursday, January 17, 2013 at 4:21 p.m.

Last Modified: Thursday, January 17, 2013 at 4:21 p.m.

Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te'o answers a question during Media Day for the BCS National Championship college football game Jan. 5 2013 in Miami. Notre Dame faces Alabama in Monday's championship game. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)

The Manti Te’o hurricane.

And that eye was closed.

ZZZZZZZZZ.

Everywhere else around the country, the story with the simple but appropriate headline of “BIZARRE” decimated the 24-hour news cycle, dominating every medium, verbal or written.

A Notre Dame football player, Te’o, claimed to have been the victim of a cruel online hoax involving a woman who he said was his girlfriend and who had purportedly died of leukemia.

Te’o’s school backed up his assertion of a deception. Yet evidence suggests that this women never existed, and that Te’o may have been materially involved in the ruse.

The story and its preposterous elements shifted the spotlight from Lance Armstrong’s Thursdaynight interview with Oprah Winfrey. Suddenly a disgraced cyclist in a televised confessional seemed almost tame by comparison.

Tame. The scene Thursday morning outside the IMG Academies.

The boss’ call came sometime earlier. Hustle up to IMG and stake out the place. Find out if Te’o, there in preparation for the NFL combine and draft, would speak with the media.

As I drove up there, the possible scenarios skipped through my mind. He’ll make a statement, but take no questions. He’ll issue a press release. He’ll find IMG’s smallest, darkest room and hide in it.

I pictured satellite trucks jostling for space, TV crews and their reporters carving out room for live reports, Bob Costas combing his hair, a logistical nightmare. I envisioned a repeat of the madness that enveloped Ed Smith Stadium in 1994 when Michael Jordan gave baseball a whirl.

I looked for all these things approaching IMG. Looked again.

In place of madness, the merely mundane. Three Tampa Bay-area television satellite trucks, prohibited from entering the IMG grounds, had parked across the street. A knot of reporters — no more than five of them — stood near the sidewalk, the chilly weather forcing hands into pockets.

Two of the reporters were from the New York Post and had driven down from Tampa, where they’d interviewed New York Yankee Derek Jeter. An older reporter in a suit worked for CNN. A younger one arrived from The Associated Press.

We all worked from the same playbook. None of us enjoyed any special access to IMG, or knew anyone who could arrange an exclusive interview with Te’o. We stood, talked and tweeted, talked, tweeted and stood.

What passed for intel was burped out in fragments. NBC’s Costas was getting the interview, then wasn’t. Later, ESPN’s Jeremy Shaap would be the one to sit down with Te’o. More misinformation.

Hours passed. A few began to wonder if perhaps Te’o wasn’t even at IMG.

Then a television reporter said she had spoken to several patrons at a nearby business. One said he’d made a delivery to IMG earlier and had spotted the Irish linebacker.

Which, at that moment, did none of us a bit of good. Sometime later, the definitive word came down from IMG — Manti Te’o would not be speaking with the media.

A few of us hung around a bit longer before departing. For one morning/afternoon, the man for whom a million questions await had escaped.

But he can’t dance forever. Manti Te’o is either the most naive and trusting person in the history of mankind, or one whose participation in a hoax will put his name alongside Rosie Ruiz, Tonya Harding and Danny Almonte.

It can’t be both. America wants to know which one it is.

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